Niall Ferguson is one of the world's leading thinkers and writers on geoeconomic, global systemic, and other key international strategic issues. Time has named him one of the world's 100 most influential people, and two of his books, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2003) and The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2008) have been converted into television series. His most recent book is the best-selling Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (2008), from which he has drawn numerous lessons for analyzing and responding to the current global crisis. His earlier The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History.

Dr. Ferguson taught at Oxford and the Stern Business School at New York University before moving to Harvard in 2004. He is a prolific commentator on contemporary economies and politics in both the British and American press, a regular contributor to television and radio on both sides of the Atlantic, a contributing editor to the Financial Times and a columnist in Newsweek. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.